It is well known to use screws and nails, or similar pin-type fasteners, for securing floor, wall and ceiling panels to supporting structures in buildings and vehicle cargo container bodies. In the case of truck trailer bodies, hard wood floors are attached to a metal frame or substrate. The typical truck trailer body has a steel frame, and the hardwood flooring is secured to the steel frame with metal fasteners. The existing technology for securing floors to truck trailer bodies requires pre-drilling holes in both the wood flooring and the underlying metal substrate, e.g., metal frame components such as steel angle irons or junior I-beams, and using a powered screwdriver to drive to apply self-tapping screws through the pre-drilled holes to anchor the flooring to the metal substrate. In some cases, vehicle cargo bodies or personnel-containing structures, e.g., mobile homes, may use aluminum framing. Since aluminum frame members are more easily penetrated than steel frame members of the same thickness, wood flooring and wall and ceiling panels may be attached to aluminum framing by means of nail-type pins with spiral grooves disposed along a portion of their length, with those pins being driven through the flooring and into aluminum frame members by means of a pneumatic high impact nail driver, e.g., a driver as disclosed in my U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,645,208, issued 8 Jul. 1997 and 4,040,554, issued 9 Aug. 1977.
However, using a pneumatic high impact nail driver has certain limitations with respect to applications involving hard wood flooring and steel framing. For one thing, the high impact produced by such a driver tends to split the hardwood flooring. Also, some steel framing members are too thin, which results in bending of the steel substrate by the fasteners under the force exerted by the high impact driver. Moreover, since it is strictly a hammer-like impact procedure, when a fastener is driven through the floor into an underlying high tensile strength frame member, the fastener may or may not be driven properly to force the flooring member into a tight fit with the frame, resulting in it not passing inspection requirements. Consequently the procedure using predrilled holes and self-tapping screws has become standard industry practice.
In an attempt to avoid the necessity of pre-drilling the underlying frame members, driver/fastening systems have been conceived that utilize special high carbon steel self-drilling, self-tapping screws and a high torque rotary screwdriver. However, for the most part, those systems function satisfactorily only if the underlying metal to be penetrated is a mild steel, e.g., A-36 steel, and has a maximum thickness of about ⅛″ or less. A further impedance to use of self-drilling screws is that currently some trailer body manufacturers prefer to use a high tensile strength steel having a tensile strength of 80,000 psi and a yield strength of approximately 50,000–65,000 psi. It is difficult to reliably penetrate that high tensile strength steel in a thickness of ⅛″, since in the process of attempting to do so the screws tend to burn due to the heat buildup. Therefore, there has existed a need for an improved fastening method and apparatus which can reliably attach wood flooring to high tensile strength steel substrates having a thickness in the order of ⅛″ or thicker. Such a method and apparatus is described and illustrated in my copending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/619,374, filed on even date herewith, for “Method And Apparatus For Attaching Structural Components With Fasteners”, which application is a continuation-in-part of my prior U.S. application Ser. No. 10/195,207, filed Jul. 15, 2002. To extent necessary, the disclosure of that copending application identified by (hereinafter referred to as the “HMH-90 CIP application”) is incorporated herein by reference
The apparatus disclosed in my HMH-90 CIP application involves use of a pneumatic rotary impact torque driver, such as the Model 2131 pneumatic driver made by Ingersoll-Rand Co. of 200 Chestnut Ridge Road, Woodcliff Lake, N.J. 07675, and self-drilling, self-tapping fasteners, and includes a magazine that is adapted to accommodate a plurality of self-drilling, self-tapping screw fasteners mounted in a supporting plastic strip, with the fasteners being formed so as to facilitate their removal from the plastic strip when being driven into fastening relation with structural components.